Lawyers must be more honest about 'confusing costs' to customers, says Ombudsman

Lawyers must be clearer in explaining their costs and pricing system to customers, the Chief Legal Ombudsman has said.

Adam Sampson said around one in four people contacting the Legal Complaints Service does so to bring up the issue of fees.

In
a report published today, he called on legal professionals to be more
open and honest about their 'confusing' costs and issued separate
guidance for consumers and lawyers in an effort to tackle the problem.

Confusing costs: People are sometimes shocked when they receive their fees from lawyers because they haven't understood what the costs are likely to be

The
ombudsman said lawyers should clearly explain charges to customers as
soon as possible and give a 'reasonable estimate' of the total costs of a
case.

Speaking
on BBC Breakfast, he said: 'Simply put, when you go to lawyer at an
important time of your life, a lawyer very often talks lawyer at you and
doesn’t make it really crisp and clear what they are going to do for
you and what the price is going to be at the end.

'And
that ends up in huge confusion. Many of the complaints we see, actually
the lawyer hasn’t overcharged, it’s simply that the customer hasn’t
understood what the nature of the bill is going to be.'

He said clients also often do not understand how much they will be charged.

'You can go to one lawyer who will give you a fixed price for what it is that they’re going to do for you.

'You
go to another lawyer and the lawyer will say "No, my charge out is an
hourly rate of £201 an hour plus VAT, plus disbursements" - again words
that we don’t understand and that doesn’t give you any clarity about
what your total bill is going to be.'

Speaking of the importance of the legal ombudsman, he added: 'It’s really vital that people do have somewhere independent to go.

'And
in many cases, as I’ve said, when you look into it, in fact the lawyers
done nothing wrong, but in a significant number of cases there is a
real issue here and fortunately we have the power not just to
investigate but to order the lawyer to put it right.'

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Lawyers must be more honest about 'confusing costs' to customers, says Ombudsman